Biography

Pantelis Kassotis is a Greek software engineer, video game developer and publisher, mostly known as the creator of the Neoblazer and Captain Dodger series. He is the founding developer behind Varangian North, having worked on Fortnite (2017) , LEGO Fortnite (2023) , Rocket Racing (2023) , and Fall Guys (2020) . Born in Athens, Greece he graduated from Lyceum of Agios Stefanos and then attended the University of the Aegean in the island of Chios to study business administration. Back in his high school years he dreamed of becoming a professional artist, and took afternoon classes to prepare for the Athens School of Fine Arts, but eventually went to business school for a more secure future. As a way to express his creative side he started drawing cartoon sketches and eventually created his first comic book "Eric & Erica" which he presented at the Comicdom Con Athens of 2014. After publishing two more comic books as a sketch artist, he transitioned into animation by creating the comedy animation web-series Just Funny (2017-) for Funny Or Die, alongside his childhood friend Christos Poulos-Renesis . After Funny Or Die was absorbed by Vox Media in 2018, he took a break from animation and began working as a freelance developer. This new melding of animation and coding skills led him down the path of game development and VFX. His first commercial project in video games was Gluttony (2021) , which he coded while completing his mandatory military service in the Hellenic Army. On December 13th, 2023 and after publishing twelve more indie titles, he joined Epic Games as an outsource developer and began working on his first AAA projects. Despite his reputation in the video game world he still works as a developer and technology consultant in non-gaming projects and gives development lectures at schools like Hanze University.